Top 50 Singles of 2003

30: Sean Paul
"Like Glue"
[Atlantic]

"Like Glue" dropped time again at parties this past year, offering plenty of semi-inebriated opportunities to analyze the subtext behind the lyrics, "All I know the time it is gettin' dread/ Need a lot of trees up in my head/ Got a lot of damsel in my bed to run dat re-eeeddd!!!" Still nothing. Besides cracking the Jamaican patois code, the Speak-n-Spell instrumental production is also fun to take apart: the shakers and Star Trek synth squelches aren't so noticeable at first, but once located on the horizon, these rudimentary effects become a crazed low-bit focal point. And though Sean Paul's no gem live, when his thin voice finds cushioning through multi-tracking, the prose rhythms alone are golden. --Brandon Stosuy

29: M83
"Run into Flowers"
[Gooom]

Even with respect to the archetypical obscurity of independent music, 2003 was a year in which underdogs of nearly every conceivable style left their mark. M83, on the other hand, left a crater. With naught but a closet of antiquated tech and a penchant for shoegazer bombast, the French duo forged a sound both earthen and astral, synthetic yet human. The bright, crisp tones of "Run into Flowers" are immediately striking: buzzing synthesizers cascade over a distant stuttering drum machine while mournful strings coat the song's longing refrain with a delphian urgency. Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts is full of similar moments, but none reach this apex. --Joshua Sharp

28: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Maps"
[Interscope]

If you don't buy the idea that Karen O sounds more sincere when she admits to longing for the things that lie at the root of her angst and frustration, "Maps" could hardly make a more convincing argument. It's one of the only Y-Y-Yeahs songs on record where she brings her "squeal" down to a "sing," and quite possibly the only song period in which she does so with unprecedented grace, reining in the authority she cultivates elsewhere. Here, she's conciliatory, but not heartbroken; it's not weakness, it's hope for compromise. Nick Zinner, meanwhile, plays an impossibly captivating guitar part to match O's fragile emotional balance between anger and sadness. Talk of sincerity or insincerity aside, "Maps" is undiminished-- the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have never sounded finer. --Eric Carr

27: Outkast
"GhettoMusick"
[Arista]

The synths spit like a kid's Bronx cheer, kicking off Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below with the double-disc opus' most deafening kitchen-sink cut: Andre's production arrays bullet-spitting drum machines and squelchy beats that jump spinning-the-dial-style to ticklish keyboards and soul-slow interludes, while Big Boi races through rhymes that mark his hip-hop territory and namecheck his grandma. This could get obnoxious if Outkast weren't so damn charismatic, but they're just blasting the party open: "Feeling great, feeling good, how are you?" --Chris Dahlen

26: Black Dice
"Cone Toaster"
[DFA]

For an ensemble that can so hastily be criticized for its lack of musical motive, Black Dice's single of 2003, "Cone Toaster", is a carefully considered, thoughtful exercise in minimalist noise, building slowly for slightly over a minute, then commencing a trans-pan call-and-response between two heavily processed guitar shrills atop a lone but steady bass pound. A low bass rumble hints at what's to come: an armed robbery of the lush wavers of sound concealed deep within the vaults of simple noise. After the build, Black Dice offers a mate to the composition's first half, taking from it a rib of sampling, which spurs the track but also predicts its thrilling sputter. --Nick Sylvester

25: Jay-Z
"La La La (Excuse Me Miss Again)"
[Rocafella]

With the Neptunes alternating between careening air-raid synth during the choruses and relentlessly looping piano and temple hand drums in the verses, Shawn Carter is given ample space to lay down one of the year's most impressive lyrical performances on the Blueprint II offshoot-cum- Bad Boys II single "La La La (Excuse Me Miss Again)". Walking tall with the talk to match it, Hova makes brash claims like, "You can't rain dance on my picnic/ No Haitian voodoo, no headless chickens," and, "I'm the franchise, like a Houston Rocket/ Yao Ming?" If, going into The Black Album, we were left any clue that it would be quite so hot, this was it. --Rollie Pemberton

24: The Darkness
"I Believe in a Thing Called Love"
[Atlantic]

The Darkness' "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" is an air-guitar-inducing sonic orgasm of guitars turned up to 11, cheetah-print spandex, and gleeful, fist-pumping sexual innuendo. While opening with a kickstart two-note drum fill not heard on record since Def Leppard's glory days, and featuring one of the most hilariously awesome couplets of the year ("I can't explain all the feelings thatcha making me feel/ My heart's in overdrive and your behind the steering wheel"), "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" is the perfect soundtrack for Saturday night Camaro cruising and adolescent dreams of arena-rock stardom. --Hartley Goldstein

23: Justin Timberlake
"Rock Your Body"
[Jive]

Over the past year-and-a-half, Timberlake's grown from a teen-pop embarrassment to the biggest pop vocalist in the world. It's easy to see why: he's got all the panache of vintage Michael Jackson, but without the any of that uncomely pedophilia. In fact, Timberlake and the Neptunes beat Jackson at his own game this year with "Rock Your Body", as fine an approximation of Off the Wall -era MJ as I've ever heard. The pleading falsetto is right on time, immediately preceded by tough talk about grabbing your girl (and a "couple more")-- the drama! It's yet another perfect single from the great, white, non-Eminem hope. --Dominique Leone

22: The Strokes
"12:51"
[RCA]

The Strokes' first unabashed Cars homage, "12:51", is a wonderfully catchy slice of 80s new waviness capturing the grim malaise surrounding that eternal adolescent conundrum: What are we going to do tonight? Julian Casablanca's demure vocals may be the very essence of haute-irony as he delivers lines like, "We could go and get 40's/ Fuck going to that party," in his trademark disconnected drawl. But the track's showstopper is Albert Hammond Jr's Moog-mocking guitar virtuosity: a guitar line so great that recovering Stroke-detractors still refuse to believe it's not a synth. --Hartley Goldstein

21: Basement Jaxx [ft. Dizzee Rascal]
"Lucky Star"
[Astralwerks]

Basement Jaxx can do minimal when so inclined, but it's not their strong suit. Kish Kash was an album overstuffed with sounds, moods, personalities, and ideas, and the bulging "Lucky Star" was an honest first glimpse. The Arabian Nights hook, rebel yells, bottomless layers of synths and guitars, and of course, Dizzee's spastic wordspray are far too much to squeeze in. You can almost see Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe grinning manically as they strain to cram another clown into this 4½-minute Volkswagen. --Mark Richardson